Football has overtaken baseball as America’s game. It is more watched, discussed, and brings in much more money. And in this year of big choices, big elections, where everything seems on the brink and everything seems so important the Giants and Cowboys, symbols of America, meet on a Wednesday night to begin a new season for America’s game.
The Cowboys: a proud winning franchise trying to reclaim some of former glory that came to define the team. There are romantic ideas around the ‘Boys; they are America’s team, the passion of the Lone Star State. Everything is bigger in Texas, the wins are historic and momentous, the losses gut-wrenching and tragic. The star on the helmet is as American and iconic as a Stetson. They have fans across the country rabid for glimpse of the teams the Cowboys organization has fielded in the past
The Giants: underdogs in every game of the playoff until the Super Bowl last year. They are the current champs but are still considered very vulnerable. They are the New York football Giants — bright lights, big city — a team and a city synonymous with gritty, dangerous defenses. Big Blue. The Cowboy’s star is to a Stetson what the NY is to a construction helmet.
As much as these two franchises reflect each other, last year their seasons were mirror images as well. The Cowboys led the division with a 7-4 record before falling apart down the stretch. They lost 4 of the last 5 with 2 vicious losses to the Giants; the worst of which had Dallas blowing a 12 point lead with just over 3 minutes to play. The Giants, after rallying in that game, starting winning games enough to propel them above Dallas to win the NFC East. The Giants got hot at the right time and came home with some new hardware; the Cowboys went out and shopped for some new weapons in hopes of propelling them to the next level.
The ‘Boys revamped their secondary by signing free agent Brandon Carr and moving up in the draft to snag Morris Claiborne. The hope would be that these two cornerbacks would improve the secondary and give the defensive line more time to get to Manning, who absolutely torched the Cowboys throwing for over 740 yards their two games. If Manning has another night like those and Romo has another night like he’s had against the Giants pass rush (sacked 6 times in their last meeting) it’s going to be a long night for Dallas.
The Cowboys have no illusions of how important this game is and are going to come out strong, there’s a lot of pride on the line and in the NFL it’s very hard to beat a team 3 times in a row. When asked about the game last year’s break out star for New York, Victor Cruz, said, “It’s going to be a good test for us…we’re anxious to get started”. So are we.
